Revisiting image splitting

The paper presents a modified version of the classical split and merge algorithm (Horowitz, S. and Pavlidis, T., 1976). Instead of performing a regular decomposition of the image, it relies on a split at an optimal position that makes a good interregion separation. The implementation of the algorithm uses an initial image preprocessing to speed-up computation. Experimental results show that the number of regions generated by the split phase is largely reduced and that the distortion of the segmented image is smaller, while the execution time is slightly increased.